Location

Start Date

End Date

Student's Major

Student's College

Science, Engineering and Technology

Mentor's Name

Sungwon Kim

Mentor's Department

Mechanical and Civil Engineering

Mentor's College

Science, Engineering and Technology

Description

Carbon nanotubes are an emerging nanomaterial with exciting applications in nanocomposites, biosensors, and much more. The properties of carbon nanotubes are partly dependent on the size of the catalyst metal nanoparticles from which the carbon nanotubes are grown. This project aims to produce a recipe for specifying the size of the catalyst nanoparticles by controlled annealing, thereby providing researchers with an additional avenue of control for the final carbon nanotube properties. It has been hypothesized that the size of catalyst nanoparticles can be predetermined by appropriately selecting the initial catalyst film thickness, plateau temperature, and plateau time of the annealing process. To this end, three different thicknesses of nickel catalyst metal film were deposited onto silicon wafers and annealed in a tube furnace to form nanoparticles. Fifteen unique combinations of anneal plateau temperature and plateau time were applied to samples of each thickness. The annealed samples were then characterized by atomic force microscopy, and distributions of the equivalent diameters of the nanoparticles were collected using a software package. From these distributions, a correlation was developed that connected catalyst particle equivalent diameter to the three aforementioned process parameters. This correlation will allow researchers to more reliably tailor catalyst nanoparticle size and final carbon nanotube properties to their specific application.

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Apr 18th, 2:10 PMApr 18th, 3:10 PM

Catalyst Metal Nanoparticle Size Study Using Atomic Force Microscopy

CSU 255

Carbon nanotubes are an emerging nanomaterial with exciting applications in nanocomposites, biosensors, and much more. The properties of carbon nanotubes are partly dependent on the size of the catalyst metal nanoparticles from which the carbon nanotubes are grown. This project aims to produce a recipe for specifying the size of the catalyst nanoparticles by controlled annealing, thereby providing researchers with an additional avenue of control for the final carbon nanotube properties. It has been hypothesized that the size of catalyst nanoparticles can be predetermined by appropriately selecting the initial catalyst film thickness, plateau temperature, and plateau time of the annealing process. To this end, three different thicknesses of nickel catalyst metal film were deposited onto silicon wafers and annealed in a tube furnace to form nanoparticles. Fifteen unique combinations of anneal plateau temperature and plateau time were applied to samples of each thickness. The annealed samples were then characterized by atomic force microscopy, and distributions of the equivalent diameters of the nanoparticles were collected using a software package. From these distributions, a correlation was developed that connected catalyst particle equivalent diameter to the three aforementioned process parameters. This correlation will allow researchers to more reliably tailor catalyst nanoparticle size and final carbon nanotube properties to their specific application.